Gonzalo Martin's List: Sitios / Sites

• Subvert and Profit runs an ever-expanding black market for votes on social media sites. We are simultaneously the easiest way to make money online and the cheapest form of advertising in the web 2.0 sphere. We are the crowdhackers, and we are very good at what we do.
• Other "social media optimization" sites can only advise their clients on ways to design their sites for Digg and StumbleUpon. Subvert and Profit actually gets you the votes, and for cheap!
• We can deliver YouTube views through Digg Video and StumbleUpon.

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• The company, which wants to raise $100 million via IPO, has filed a prospectus  which shows impressive revenue growth from its cable distributors. Affiliate revenue was $53.8 million in 2007 from the likes of Comcast, Time Warner and DirecTV, up 44% from the year before. But its ability to extract an average $0.11/month per subscriber from cable operators looks mostly like a reflection of Gore's ability to ink favorable cable deals.

• Our media model is in the early stages of development and may not achieve broad acceptance by users and advertisers. For example, our TV advertising revenue per subscriber household is

    

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  below the industry average
• our website was only recently launched and has not generated significant revenue to date
• We currently are not rated for viewership by Nielsen Media Services in the United States or by other media rating agencies outside the United States. In the future, we expect to obtain such ratings. Historically, new television networks have received negligible ratings in the first several years in which they are rated. If we become rated and receive negligible ratings, advertisers may be less interested in sponsoring our content or paying rates consistent with our expectations, and our business, operating results and financial condition could be adversely affected.
• Nearly one-third of our programming is viewer-created content, which is our least expensive form of programming. If we are unable to obtain sufficient high-quality, viewer-created content, we would be forced to use more internally developed content or acquired content from sources other than our viewer
• We expect that advertising revenue will constitute a significant portion of the revenue to be generated by Current.com. To date we have realized very limited revenue from Current.com, and there can be no assurance that we will realize significant revenue or any other benefits from our website
• These clauses typically provide that, in the event we enter into an agreement with another distributor with a lower net effective rate per subscriber household or otherwise on more favorable terms, these more favorable terms must be offered to the distributor holding the MFN right, subject to certain exceptions. As such, MFN clauses may inhibit our ability to enter into new distribution agreements without adversely affecting the terms of our existing distribution agreements. In addition, MFN clauses are often complex and require subjective interpretation.

•  Current.com faces competition from companies that are consumer destination

    

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  websites, such as AOL, Google, MSN and Yahoo!, online video aggregators, such as Hulu and YouTube, and news and social network platforms, such as del.icio.us, digg.com, Facebook and MySpace.

• If we fail to develop and maintain brand awareness, our business would suffer.

    

  We believe that developing and maintaining brand awareness in a cost-effective manner is critical to achieving increased viewership of our programming, generating higher advertising revenue and entering into new distribution agreements that expand the number of subscriber households we reach. Our brand promotion activities may not achieve any of these objectives, and even if they do, any resulting increase in revenue may not offset the expense we incur in building our brand. If we fail to promote and maintain our brand, our business, operating results and financial condition would be adversely affected.
• In the Spring of 2008, we expect to launch in Italy on Sky Italia
• In 2007, 13% of our revenue was generated outside the United States, compared to none in 2006. We intend to increase our subscriber households and advertisers outside the United States by expanding our operations abroad.
• Although young adults are increasingly skeptical of top-down news and information, the television platform remains the dominant medium for the consumption of content, with young adults spending more and more time watching television. According to a Millennial Strategy Program survey conducted by Frank N. Magid & Associates, forty percent of young adults watch two to four hours of TV a day on average. However, young adults are not watching television news. According to data from Nielsen Media Research, only 0.8%, 0.7% and 1.0% of 18-34 year olds were reached by ABC World News Tonight, CBS Evening News and NBC Nightly News, respectively, during the average 30-minute evening telecast in the third quarter of 2007. Also, only 1.5% of 18-34 year olds were reached by CNN during the average 24-hour day in the third quarter of 2007. Young adults increasingly turn to other distribution platforms, such as the Internet, to meet their needs for the information they seek.
• We believe that the reason young adults do not engage with TV for nonfiction content is that the format in which TV delivers this content has not evolved to meet their preferences and needs

• A key solution that we provide advertisers is the ability to let our young adult viewers create commercials that we then air on Current TV. These VCAMs are often compelling to our

    

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  audience, and research shows that viewers prefer VCAMs nine to one over expensive traditional commercials.

• At its core, Current.com is a social news feed that, like Current TV, is generated in large part by our audience and curated by us. We have built tools to help users aggregate interesting stories and videos from around the web, organize them according to thousands of topics, share them with their friends and with the world and even get them aired on Current TV.

    

  At Current.com, we have also built a pioneering two-screen application that connects our Internet users, in real-time, to Current TV. They can see what pod is currently playing, shuffle forward and back in time, join rich-media conversations around Current content and make a contribution themselves. The two-screen application connects our website and TV network, and gives our TV viewers a reason to visit Current.com and our online users a reason to tune in to Current TV.
• According to spring 2007 data from Simmons Market Research Bureau, Inc., Current indexes highest in concentration of viewers 25-34 years old among all cable networks, and sixth for adults aged 18-34. A custom study conducted by OTX in the spring of 2007 indicates that viewers of Current TV watch an average of 7.5 hours per week of our programming and that 46% of viewers watch Current TV for 30 minutes or more at a time. This demonstrates our success in providing content that engages our target market and in offering a media solution for this elusive audience
• New advertising models for engaging viewers and blue-chip advertisers.    Our innovative marketing program provides a compelling advertising solution to major advertisers, including Toyota, T-Mobile, Johnson & Johnson, General Electric, Geico and L'Oreal.
• Continue to pursue strategic relationships with innovative, pioneering brands.    We have a number of strategic relationships with partners such as Google, Lonely Planet, Reuters and EMI
• Viewer-Created Content (VC²) (approximately 30% of our programming)
• Original programming (approximately 60% of our programming)
• Acquired programming (approximately 10% of our programming)
• Our research shows that this new form of marketing is so effective that Current TV viewers prefer VCAMs nine to one over expensive advertising agency commercials. Furthermore, because of their effectiveness, some of the sponsors have chosen to license VCAMs for use on other media platforms
• .S. Distributors
  
     U.K. and Ireland Distributors
  
     Advertisers
  
    

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    •  DirecTV
   •  Comcast
   •  EchoStar
   •  Time Warner
   •  AT&T   •  BSkyB
   •  Virgin Media   •  Toyota
   •  T-Mobile
   •  Johnson & Johnson
   •  General Electric
   •  Geico
   •  L'Oreal
• Google – Our relationship with Google allows our users to stay current with what the world is searching for, as we air a segment on Current TV at the bottom of each hour identifying the most popular searches on Google. 
  
  

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  Reuters – Our agreement with Reuters gives Current and our VC² producers special access to news feeds that have historically been proprietary to Reuters' subscriber
• EMI – Our agreement with EMI is an unprecedented production and marketing partnership, which gives Current and our VC² producers access to the music library of the largest music publisher in the world for use with our popular pods. 
• As of December 31, 2007, we employed 391 full-time employees. Our headquarters are in San Francisco, we have an office in London, production studios in Los Angeles and an advertising sales office in New York City.

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• But the company though is shifting focus away from lifecasting and onto eventcasting. “We are certainly focused on the eventcasting,” said Wallace. “We have a great platform and we welcome everybody, but our focus is certainly on these deeper events.

• he Bar Channel, a venture in the Great White North, broadcasts programming via closed-circuit internet to subscriber bars that it provides TV-style monitors. After launching in April, the network grew to 88 Ontario bars and about $600,000 in first-year revenue, and it expects to add 50 establishments in Calgary and 50 in Ontario during the coming year.
• The brewer is intrigued Bar Channel's ability to let it customize messaging at each bar, which gives it the ability to emphasize drink specials, or even show employee-training videos during slower hours
• While that programming may have a hard time competing with, say, Hockey Night in Canada, it's more effective during the many hours bars are open and live sports aren't on. "You've got your own channel," he said. "That's more compelling than straight signage or another neon."

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